A SERIOUS Issue That Requires We ALL Stop Being Complacent And Silent !

This is my first and hopefully my *last* post about a political issue rather than about our lives here at Fayrehale. I have been feeling the need to post something about what is happening in this Country with regard to our food and GMOs.

We are striving to raise and preserve as much of our food as we can. We get better at it each year. This year has been an experience with our extreme weather fluctuation.

I assume that if you are following us, you too have a similar interest and are doing what you can in your current circumstances for your own food well being.

Our corn has tasseled. The several times a day I walk by its 10 foot stalks and observe the swelling of the ears after pollination, a dark cloud hangs over me! There is GMO corn planted along route 5 . Is it far enough away? Did ours tassel before or after? Has my small row of corn been raped? I, We, should not have to worry about this! We should have the right and the freedom to grow safe, pure, NON-GMO raped plants for our food.

I am going to share a post just released by Joel Salatin. If you are not familiar with him you need to be. Hopefully you will take the time to read it. Hopefully it will make you think and you will become more vocal, in your own way, about the dangers of GMO.

From Joel:

Yesterday morning at shortly after 7 a.m. the phone rang: it was 911 calling us at the farm. Some cows had wandered out into the road at one of our leased farms.

We’ve been working on about 400 yards of new boundary fence on this farm and had the old fence all down, the site prepped, and half the new posts pounded in, hoping to finish up yesterday and stretch fence today. We’d left a couple of internal electric fence gates open in our comings and goings on the project. A deer went through our small temporary electric fence surrounding the cows and they wandered over through the open gates and
across the boundary onto the neighbors and into the road.

Of course, we arrived on the scene and immediately got everyone back in, fences up, and gates closed. This farm is right on the outskirts of Staunton and is surrounded by some 20 house-and lot or house-and-small-acreage property owners. We don’t know them all, but have talked to several of them. We didn’t know which ones the cows had wandered onto or if any damage had been done, but figured we’d hear about it if someone was disgruntled.

Sure enough last evening the phone rang and it was one of the neighbors who said the cows tromped two rose bushes. I apologized profusely and asked what would satisfy her. “$50 would be fine,” she said, clearly not wanting to sound too upset. I immediately wrote her a check and put it in the mail this morning. That was the first time in more than half a century that we’ve ever had to compensate a neighbor for cow damage.

But that’s not the main part of the story. The main part of the story is this: as I was writing the check–and very happy to do so–I couldn’t help but think of the folks who suffer trespass from Monsanto’s genetically modified organisms, bred to be be promiscuous, who don’t recognize property lines, and come willy nilly to conduct sexual orgies on property where landowners do not want them, with NO LIABILITY ON THE PART OF THE OWNERS. That Monsanto or any other bio-tech company views such activities cavalierly indicates a profound and terrifying view to personal space and the sacredness of personal property.

In our current state of twisted cultural thinking, not only is Monsanto not liable for in essence trampling my rose bushes, our courts have decided that I’m to pay a royalty to Monsanto for the privilege of their life forms, their owned patented beings, trampling my rose bushes. Can you imagine my telling this nice neighbor: “Not only will I not pay you $50, I think you should pay me $50 for free tillage services?” My goodness, she could call the county’s district attorney and have me served with a warrant before lunchtime.

Trampling someone else’s rose bushes is the essence of “secure in their persons and effects,” a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the underpinning of personal ownership of not only my being, but the stuff that is an extension of my being. My clothes, my home, my car, may family, my food–if we can’t have anything that’s “mine” then I cease to exist as an entity.

As a culture, we’ve become increasingly belligerent about bullying other people’s stuff. Whether it’s zoning regulations in Fauquier County threatening to license in-home prayer meetings because too many cars arrive at someone’s home or denying my ability to sell you a glass of raw milk or telling the Syrians how they are supposed to run their country–this idea that “I know what’s best for you and I’m going to force you to do it” is eroding the very
essence of personal beingness. I’m told by people in foster car and orphanage administrators that one of the first and most profound healing things that can be done in any of these situations is to create personal security for something of ownership. Maybe it’s nothing more than a pencil and notepad, but knowing that my stuff will not be violated is the first step in self-worth, self-awareness, and personal well-being.

Last Sunday I capped off the four-day freshman orientation activities with an afternoon speech at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As part of the day’s activities, Teresa and I had lunch with a couple of professors, deans, students, and the campus chaplain. I couldn’t help asking the chaplain: “What’s the number one issue that brings students to you for counsel?”

Without batting an eye or hesitating, she responded: “Dealing with the tension between what they really want to do, deep down in their heart, and what their parents expect them to do to be high income-producing people.” This is a perfect extension of this self-beingness I’m taking about–parents using their bully emotional or economic
superiority to pooh-pooh the passion of young people wanting to heal what their parents have broken: economy, environment, emotion. We see it even within our intern program. Too often parents think their children are throwing their lives away to become farmers. Actually, it’s considered a personal disgrace to have a child go into a vocation that crates blisters, splinters, and callouses.

This heavy-handed demand to tell you what to do, whether it’s the U.S. empire-building adulteration of the military’s sacred duty by meddling in every nation on earth or telling someone they can’t snort cocaine or demanding parents to vaccinate their kids or demanding people to buy health insurance or criminalizing neighbor-to-neighbor voluntary food commerce from raw milk to home made pickles to cottage-scaled bologna, it’s as if we’ve become so disempowered by shallow employment and money-only business vision that we must turn our personal druthers on other people to give us a feeling of ownership and meaning. That’s a long sentence. I apologize.

Here at Polyace, we do not ask for subsidies, government blessings, grants, or anything. All we ask is to be left alone. We don’t advocate dumping manure at McDonald’s or more regulations about corporate abuses. If people like us are free to practice our God-given self-beingness, the choices and alternatives created will bring competitive
accountability to business and political agendas. As a culture we’ve strayed far from liberty. The essence of liberty is allowing someone to engage in risky behavior, for someone else’s fist to go as far as possible . . . without touching anyone else.

Trampling rose bushes may seem insignificant, but the way this neighbor and I handled it is the way toward liberty. I recognize her right to be secure in her effects–yes, her home is her castle and her rose bushes are an extension of her beingness. The ultimate statement of liberty is to recognize the sacredness of personal effects, to recognize the rightness of being able to own something that a king or bureaucrat can’t take, whether it’s my health care options or my food options. The next time you think: “we should have a law to make sure that can’t happen,” or “that’s wrong, we need to intervene,” think about whether it passes the trampled roses test. Does my solution trump liberty? Does my GMO trump liberty? Do my beliefs trump your liberty? Does my vision for our society trump your liberty? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Think about the things society has absolutely known. The world is flat. Blacks are inferior. Slavery is fine. Native Americans are barbaric. Leeches heal the blood. Spirits cause sickness. Homeschooling is wrong. Alcohol needs to be prohibited. GMOs will save the world. DDT will save the world. Raw milk is hazardous. Hemp is horrible. Get the drift?

My take away: I must be very careful about what I become righteously indignant about. It could come back to bite. Remember the trampled rose bushes.

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As I watch the squash and pumpkins grow and ripen, as we prepare to plant the hoop house we use for winter greens (kale & spinach), I am reading Joel Salatin’s book Folks, this ain’t normal . I can not recommend it highly enough. You will never read a more important, eye opening book. Winter is coming, you will have time to read and this book should be at the top of your list and on top of the pile!

As I end this one and only political post, I remind you that much of the world has rejected and/or ejected GMOs. We need to do the same before it is too late. Maybe it already is too late.

Please tell your friends...

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2 Responses to A SERIOUS Issue That Requires We ALL Stop Being Complacent And Silent !

I am so thankful for the voices willing to speak up about this issue. The folks at Fayrehale Farm have done the most to inform and educate me about what is actually happening in this very disturbing time. I am attempting to share and prepare for my family and you encourage me continually in this effort. I personally do not see this as a political post but rather a compassionate plea for us to pay attention. Thank you! And thank you for sharing the post from Joel –